The Best Classic Lasagna Recipe – Homemade lasagna full of pasta, ricotta, a homemade meat sauce, and tons of cheese. This is the world’s best lasagna recipe!
I’ve been working on this meat lasagna recipe for over a year.
I set out to make the best traditional lasagna recipe. Every time I made it, I’d make little tweaks here and there until I thought it was just right.
I think I finally nailed it!
How to make lasagna:
- Make the meat sauce
- Make a ricotta cheese mixture
- Boil the pasta
- Assemble the lasagna
- Bake
- Cool
- Enjoy
How to layer lasagna:
- Spread a thin layer of pasta sauce in the bottom of a baking dish
- Make a layer of cooked lasagna noodles
- Spread an even layer of the ricotta cheese mixture
- Spread an even layer of meat sauce
- Repeat those layers two times
- Top it with a final layer of noodles, sauce, mozzarella, and parmesan cheese
How to bake lasagna:
- Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes
- Remove the foil and bake for 15 more minutes
- Let the lasagna rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing
Wondering what to serve with this amazing lasagna recipe? Try these.
- Cream Cheese Italian Pinwheels from Amanda’s Easy Recipes
- Salad with Homemade Garlic & Herb Vinaigrette
- Zesty Tomato Broccoli Salad – From Inspire a Creation
- Homemade Garlic Bread – From Recipe Tin Eats
You may also like:
- The Best Classic Meatloaf Recipe
- The Best Classic Chili Recipe
- The Best Classic Buttermilk Banana Bread Recipe
Watch the step by step video for The Best Classic Lasagna recipe below.
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Best Classic Lasagna Recipe
The Best Classic Lasagna Recipe - Homemade lasagna full of pasta, ricotta, a homemade meat sauce, and tons of cheese. This is the world's best lasagna recipe!
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 50 minutes
Video
Ingredients
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1/2 lb. sweet Italian sausage
- 1 medium onion -chopped
- 2 garlic cloves -minced
- 1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
- 1 (15 oz.) can crushed tomatoes
- 2 (6 oz.) cans tomato paste
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 3 teaspoons salt -divided
- 3 teaspoons Italian seasoning -divided
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves -divided
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley -divided
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese -divided
- 15 oz. (1 ¾ cups) whole milk Ricotta cheese
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese -divided
- 1 large egg
- 12 lasagna noodles
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Make the meat sauce. Add beef and sausage to a large skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it apart with a wooden spoon. Add the onion and garlic. Cook until meat is browned, about 6-8 minutes. Drain the fat from the meat. Return the meat to the skillet.
- Add the tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, water, sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon basil, and the black pepper. Stir until well combined. Cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer the sauce for 30 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the minced parsley.
- As the sauce cooks, make the ricotta mixture. In a large bowl, add 1 cup mozzarella, the ricotta, ¼ cup parmesan, 2 tablespoons of the parsley, the egg, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning, and ½ teaspoon basil. Stir until well incorporated.
- Cook the pasta al dente, according to it’s package directions.
- Assemble the lasagna. In a 13x9 inch baking dish, add a very thin layer of meat sauce (about ¼ cup). Layer 3 lasagna noodles, ⅓ of the ricotta mixture, and 1 ½ (level) cups of meat sauce. Repeat the layers twice.
- Add a final layer of the remaining noodles, meat sauce, 1 cup mozzarella, and ¼ cup parmesan.
- Cover with foil that has been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil. Bake 15 more minutes.
- Let the lasagna cool for 15-20 minutes before cutting.
Nutrition
Serving: 1/12th of the recipe | Calories: 463kcal | Carbohydrates: 36g | Protein: 25g | Fat: 24g | Saturated Fat: 11g | Cholesterol: 91mg | Sodium: 1420mg | Potassium: 812mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 1115IU | Vitamin C: 14.9mg | Calcium: 274mg | Iron: 3.7mg
Check out all of my great ground beef recipes.
you did nail it!! I’ve made quite a few lasagnas before and they were always good but never IT. This was IT!! My family said “above restaurant quality” so thank you:) delish!! My now go to recipe.
Love this recipe!
I’ve made this twice now both times to raves…it is a very good recipe, not like another recipe that my wife said tasted like “Chef Boy Ardee” (not good)
Excellent! My mother-in-law said it was the best lasagna she’s ever had! I only had one can of tomato paste so I used a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes instead of the 15 oz size. It turned out great. I am saving this to my favorites folder.
As others said, the cheese mixture as outlined in this recipe wouldn’t cut it. I used 32 oz of ricotta and 1.5 cups of mozzarella. That seemed to be just right.
For my and my husband’s taste, this was way too tomato forward. We mostly tasted sweet tomato. The taste of the meat is completely lost in the tomato sauce. We bought really good quality beef and sausage, but you couldn’t tell that.
After eating a slice, I just taste salt and sugar. There was too much of both in this recipe.
The order of the steps made the cook time longer. The step to cooking the lasagna noodles should occur closer to the direction to simmer the meat sauce. It takes a while for that quantity of water to boil. I figured this was a no-boil recipe since I didn’t see the direction to boil earlier. I was wrong.
The lasagna was not bad, but definitely not the best that I’ve tasted. I probably won’t make it again.
Yes I agree it definitely needed more ricotta cheese. I shred a carrot for the sweetness instead of sugar.
Made this recipe today as a part of our Thanksgiving dinner. It was absolutely delicious. Other than running short on the meat sauce and ricotta, this recipe gets two thumbs up from me. Thanks for sharing.
I realized after I put this all together, the sauce is missing that touch of fennel. Next time and it will be beyond perfect!
How much fennel do you add?
Really good recipe!
The absolute best lasagna recipe ever. I’ve made this for the family at least 5 times now, 6th on the stove now. It is absolutely amazing. I usually have to substitute the sweet italian sausage for the mild italian sausage because my market is always out so I add another two tablespoons of sugar. I follow this recipe exactly as written (besides the sausage and sugar modification). One thing I would like to mention regarding the instructions. It says to preheat the oven to 350 as step one but then says to cook the sauce for 30 minutes so your oven will be on all that time. I usually wait until I’m ready to assemble to turn the oven on.
one of my favorite dishes. i love it
Thank you for sharing this recipe. My husband loves lasagna but I had never made it; until I came across this recipe! It was delicious! The only thing I did was double the meat sauce, because my husband likes sauce.
I have something to say about this recipe. This is actually a problem I have with many recipes, and I honestly don’t know if it’s me or what. Probably part of it is me. The prep time is listed as 20 minutes. 3 HOURS LATER I’m putting the lasagna in the oven! Not even exaggerating. I began at 8:15pm and did not put it in the oven until 11:15pm. Now, I’m no gourmet chef, but this is not my first rodeo in the kitchen. I looked at that prep time and knew it would take me 45 minutes at a minimum (because it always takes me a lot longer than any prep time ever listed in the history of recipes).
I pretty much don’t really care if it tastes good or not. I’m exhausted and it was not fun. I had zero interruptions. I didn’t have everything laid out before I started – and that may account for why it takes me so long – but I had easy access to everything and I just kind of got things out as I went. Still, 20 minutes versus 3 hours? I think the author here dramatically underestimated the real time for prep here. This is lasagna, after all. I followed the recipe almost exactly as listed with the exceptions being I didn’t use fresh parsley and I used minced garlic from a jar (not that the recipe states to mince it by hand).
I’m open to suggestions. Please, give me some tips to cut down on prep time!!
First time lasagna maker and it came out great! Thank you.
Excellent recipe!
This recipe is delicious. I put thin layers of meat sauce but always seem to barely have enough meat sauce for the top., It doesn’t seem to matter which recipe I use.
The flavor is great but the ingredient amounts are off. Ended up with scant cheese and meat layers instead of generous
Would make again but add some red wine to meat sauce to make more and additional cheese
I added a bit of ground red pepper and used layers of asiago, parmesan, mozzarella and cheddar on top of the sauce in each layer, and used more ricotta and fresh basil from the garden, and this is by far the best recipe I’ve tried for lasagna! Even the picky three-year-old loved it after not wanting to try it!!! Printed and saved for future use!!
Turned out perfectly, thank you for posting!
Made this last night! Delish and I’m kinda picky with lasagna! I think I’ll use the sauce recipe for spaghetti too! I used the oven ready lasagna noodles, increased the ricotta mixture, thanks to other comments. Not a huge fan of sausage but I did use about half of the listed recipe amount. Also 1 cup mozzarella on the top really meant 3 right? That’s how I read it. Lol. Thanks for my go to lasagna recipe!
Really good, but not enough ricotta or sauce. I am in the mountains so maybe that had something to do with it. Next time I’ll make a little more of both but still was a hit at my house! Served with garlic bread and salad 🙂
I made this today. The ricotta mixture is delicious. Thank you. I need to add a little more sauce to mine next time. I also added zuchinni (cut quite small) to the meat sauce mixture. It was very good. Thank you